From the Earth Below to the Heavens Above
by geraldineww
Summary: A very lachrymose wedding night. Funny, how love is. Post QoA, minor spoilers for KoA.


What Eugenides sees out the window are the other towers and windows of the palace, shadowed in the moonlit night. The courtyard is somewhere below, under parapets and balconies of the walls that he once climbed, unnoticed as he silently stole his way through Attolia's palace. He is not unnoticed now. If he closes his eyes he can hear her breathing behind him in the room, but instead he continues to stare out into the night. Somewhere into the darkness he imagines the mountains that make up the border of Eddis, though he knows if it were day he would only see more of Attolia out this window and not his home country.

He'd had many plans of how tonight would go, how he'd wanted to use this precious moment of privacy with the queen to discuss some changes that would need to happen with his new inclusion into the country, but he is frozen in front of the window. His hand clenches the window frame like there is nothing else solid in the entire room. His false hand hangs at his side, and some sick, twisted part of himself wants to remove it completely and throw it outside, to remind the queen what had happened, what will always stand between them, but still he stays silent and unmoving.

He imagines, past the mountains and mines and palace of Eddis, the country of Sounis, and its heir, waiting for when he himself would also become king, just like Eugenides has become today. Funny, he thinks, how their paths have both led them to this. This strange parallel that Eugenides knows that he would have never expected when he first met Sophos, not even if Hephestia herself came down and told them so.

If only Sophos were here, not Attolia, he thinks, and his heart twists in his chest.

Behind him, he hears the queen (his wife, he corrects himself, his _wife_,) shift underneath the covers of her bed. She's been there almost the entire time he's been standing at the window, saving only to, he assumes, change out of her ceremonial robes and into a nightdress. But she has remained as silent as him, sitting on her bed.

With effort that feels akin to moving one of Eddis's mountains by hand, he turns to look at her. She, however, is not looking at him, but instead is looking at the pages of a book that rests upon her knees. If she's noticed his gaze, she shows no sign of it; her eyes stay focused on her reading and she does not respond. Her hair falls down her shoulders (she must have removed the pins and jewels when he was lost in thought, he thinks) and she looks just as beautiful as she always has. But there is one difference in how she looks now and how Eugenides has always seen her: her eyes are rimmed with red and her face is wet with tears. She is crying.

Funny that their faces now match, he thinks, and watches her for a moment. As she turns the page the focus in her eyes becomes even more intense, and he suddenly recognizes the look on her face as a familiar emotion he knows well.

Thinking back to right after his cousin, who was Eddis, had given him his rooms in her royal library, Eugenides remembers all the time he had, alone and uninterrupted, to read to his heart's content. The library had had a great variety of subjects, from historical documents and guides for battle and war to how-to guides for building bridges and stories from even before the invaders came to their lands. Sometimes, caught up in an old story, he would be moved to tears, and Eddis herself would find him curled up on his chair by the fire, turning the last few pages with trembling hands. She would only smile at him with understanding as she perused the library herself, not taunting like some of their cousins may have in her place.

Watching the queen herself turning the last few pages of her book, he is struck by how such a small occurrence, some little thing, has suddenly affected him. He's known that she is her own person, that behind the cold wall she presents as a stone-faced queen she is a human being, an individual person with her own opinions and desires. He's known this since even before he saw her dance in her gardens, but somehow seeing this small action, being allowed to see this display of emotion, has struck him so strongly.

Eugenides knows he must be king, knows he will be king. But in the time leading up to their wedding and his coronation, with everything becoming more and more real, the idea had loomed over him in a way that he thought he would be consumed by despair, knowing it had to be done yet seeing no way to do it. He knew the Attolians hated him. He knew the queen was as uncomfortable around him as he was around her, but they would need to be unified in order to rule her kingdom. All their shared experiences were, on the whole, extremely negative, and Eugenides could see few ways to overcome this and become anything other than uncomfortable and nervous around each other. Uncomfortable and nervous at very best, he thinks, knowing sometimes how he'd catch her move out of the corner of his eye and, for a moment, be back in that chair in her dungeons. He wondered if he could forbid her from wearing green.

But seeing her so passionate and emotional over something, particularly something that he himself is passionate and emotional about, twists his heart. Perhaps they are not wholly dissimilar. Perhaps even with this one thing in common, they could make something work out of this mess that he had created.

So lost in his thoughts, he almost misses her finally turning the last page and closing her book, shutting her eyes and letting out a deep sigh. Her fingers drum on the cover and he realizes that he's been staring at her for several minutes, though if she has noticed she has made no move to respond. Eugenides realizes he should break this silence that has hung over them since they first entered the room, so he gives a half-smile he hopes doesn't look forced and asks, "Good book?"

She lets out a long breath threw her nose and for a moment Eugenides regrets ever speaking, But she reaches up and wipes her cheek with the the back of her hand. "Yes," she says, and, opening her eyes, turns to look at him. She's smiling, just a little, and Eugenides is struck by how sad she looks. He's not sure what to say, what he's supposed to say to this woman who is his new wife. They stay there, staring at each other in silence for a few moments, before she breaks the stare and looks down at the book still under her hand.

Inwardly, Eugenides curses himself, curses the gods, wishes that he could get over himself and get over this mood and all these negative emotions that he can't seem to shake. There's no room for weakness after this. The Attolians will eat him alive. He turns back to the window, places his hand on the sill and leans out for a moment, breathing in the cool night air.

The breeze on his face doesn't calm him as much as he had hoped, though it does help some. He supposes he should be grateful, in a way, that there's no glass in the window. The queen was rather unhappy after his discussion with the gods had shattered the glass on this side of the building, but in this moment, having his face outside instead of trapped in a stuffy room is something to appreciate.

The downside though, is that he almost misses the queen's soft voice, and he pulls his head back inside when he realizes she's speaking. "Have you ever..." she says, and pauses. He continues staring out the window, worried that if he turns to look at her she may stop completely. She takes a breath and continues.

"Have you ever considered... a country not needing a king and queen to rule?" Her voice is quiet and if Eugenides focuses he thinks he can hear it tremble, just a bit. He wonders if she's looking at him or still looking at her book. He makes a noise under his breath, hoping that's enough to acknowledge her words so she'll continue.

The sheets shift on the bed and the Queen goes on, "Countries have been ruled by one monarch, and ruled well... your own home country is proof of that." A pause. "But perhaps neither of those are the only way..." Her voice has been getting softer and softer as she speaks. Eugenides closes his eyes, his attention solely on her voice.

"For example, what if a country..." She hesitates. Eugenides realizes his hand is clenched into a fist, but he has no idea why. The Queen takes a slow breath. "What if a country, instead of a king and a queen, had two kings? ...two queens...?"

Eugenides opens his eyes and looks out the window again, and pointedly does not look at her. Of course he's thought of something similar before, had been thinking of it just moments before she'd started speaking, and he wonders if she'd known this. This woman, this queen, had always been incredibly skilled at crafting her appearance into a mask, so no one could tell her innermost thoughts, but though eugenides had tried to do the same he would never have that much control over himself. Over his emotions. Was she mocking him? His teeth clench and he turns to look at her.

She is, still, looking down at the book in her hands, and breathing evenly, not moving. There is no jest in her face and he is suddenly puzzled. Obviously, there had been some meaning to her words; he'd heard the weight of something in her voice when she spoke. That she had been trying to reach out to him somehow. He follows her gaze down to the object she'd been holding all night, and, thinking for a moment, recalls another time he had considered the idea that the queen, his wife, had just mentioned.

Years past, when he was still for all intents and purposes a child, lively and cunning, he'd been caught up with irritating various members of the court. Of course, earrings had always been his favorite item to steal and sacrifice to his namesake, but sometimes a garish hairpin just needed to be taken, or a cruel child's doll stolen. At the time he'd gotten into a vicious argument with one of his cousins, and he wanted to get back at her.

She, like Eugenides himself, had always been one for reading, and he knew she'd been fiercely protective of one book that had recently come into her hands. She'd found a hiding place for it that no one, regardless of how many bribes he'd thought of or how many compliments he'd paid, could tell him where it was. So, his plan devolved into waiting for her to take it somewhere with her.

He hadn't had to wait long; she was going to visit her father soon and brought it out of her room (where she'd kept it he had no idea, he'd been over every inch of her chambers) to take with them, which Eugenides assumed she meant to read on the road. He hid behind the column of an archway, and as she'd passed under it, he jumped out and grabbed it from her hands.

How she'd screamed his name as he ran, and he'd laughed until she caught up to him and tackled him to the ground. He'd always been quick, but being small had given him the disadvantage of shorter legs than his older cousin. In his frantic struggle to get away from her as she tried to pin him, he'd accidentally thrown the book across the courtyard, and it was only her enraged shriek that he realized something had gone wrong.

Eugenides had thrown it onto one of the courtyard's fountains, and though it only landed on the edge some water had started to seep through the cover. She'd grabbed it and held it to her chest with such meaning that Eugenides had suddenly been hit with remorse for his theft like he'd never felt before. He'd asked her why she'd cared so much, but at that moment she was crying too hard, and much too furious to explain.

Later, when helping her mend the water-damaged corner of the book, she'd asked him the same question his new wife had only moments before. Helen, who would soon be Eddis, had looked down at where he was sitting, holding her book steady in his hands, and asked him curiously, "Have you ever thought of a country ruled by two queens?"

Pulled from his thoughts, Eugenides lets his gaze fall on the book in the Queen of Attolia's hand, seeing the same mended corner that he'd helped with all those years ago. Funny, he thinks again, realization dawning, as he watches her other hand bunch in her sheets as she turns away from him again. Funny how these things work. He'd been so caught up in his decisions, his worries and regrets, the ways he thought that maybe they could somehow bond and be unified rulers of her country, (their country now, he reminds himself) that he'd missed the biggest similarity at all.

His heart twists one last time and before he can stop it, the corner of his mouth quirks upwards. Perhaps, he and Irene have even more in common than he realized.

* * *

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous and foolish and absurd to hope he'd understand or to think he _could_ comprehend and grasp what she was telling him. He was still a child, of course it was a fool's hope to show him this hidden part of herself and think maybe he would understand. Irene pulls her sheets even closer to her and squeezes her eyes shut tighter, trying to will herself to let this go and become the stone-faced queen she's known to be.

So caught up in her own emotions, she is completely taken aback when she realizes that Eugenides has taken a seat next to her on her bed. Her eyes fly open and she opens her mouth to snap at him but he's placed his hand over hers and the troubled look on his face is replaced with a half smile. "Actually, I have thought about that," he says.

"What?" she says.

"Two queens. Two kings. I've thought about that fairly often, actually."

He still seems a little tense to be this close to her, but nowhere near the stiff-backed posture he'd had when they first entered the room before he'd completely ignored to to spent an hour staring out her north window. And his little half-smile is still there. Is he playing some kind of game with her? she thinks. He always seems to be three steps ahead of her, and she realizes that if he is trying to toy with her emotions like this, she will slap him in the face.

"To be honest, I've thought about two kings more," he continues. "I mean, if I wanted to unite any countries with a marriage, Attolia wasn't the only one I could have chosen."

Irene thinks of Sounis, his terrible mustache and greasy blond curls, laying waste to her cities and armies and double-crossing her at every turn. She scowls.

As though reading her mind, Eugenides laughs through his nose. "No, not Sounis. He's far too old for me and far too interested in my cousin." In saying this, he starts to laugh again and his grin grows wider. "But the King of Sounis does have an heir, you know. His nephew."

Irene thinks for a moment. She knew Sounis had an heir, but there was something about this nephew that she felt as though she had forgotten. "His nephew?" she says, brows knitting.

Eugenides nods. "Yes. Sophos."

At his name, she realizes why she remembers him. Her thoughts fall back to the first time she ever met Eugenides, when he was merely a child, a young thief of seemingly no worth, dying in her prison. He'd been accompanied by Sounis's magus, who had pleaded with her to spare the boy's life. He'd also been accompanied by another young boy, as young as Eugenides himself had been, who had refused to leave the young thief's side. If she closes her eyes, she can still see his dirt smeared, tear-stained face as Sounis's heir sat in the prison, tightly holding the Eugenides's hand.

"Sophos," she repeats.

"Did you ever get a chance to speak with him?" Eugenides asks, a faraway look in his eyes. Irene shakes her head. She'd had a lot on her mind when he was a guest in her prisons, and getting to know a child was not one of them.

"He's very friendly." Eugenides is still looking past her, and his smile continues to grow as he speaks. "Very loyal. And very kind. He makes the sweetest faces when he gets nervous and blushes. And he has very nice dimples. Perhaps, if things went differently, we could have been good kings."

If things went differently, Irene thinks. If things hadn't led them here. If she hadn't made the decisions she had made. Her stomach clenches, but aloud, she says, "if things went differently... if you weren't now King of Attolia."

Eugenides makes a noise of agreement through his nose, still looking past her. He purses his lips slightly.

"Perhaps..." she continues, without realizing she's spoken. She doesn't know why she feels compelled to continue but does not stop. "Perhaps if you and Sophos were kings of Sounis, together, there could be... two queens. Also. Two queens ruling two countries. Together."

Eugenides brings his gaze back to her and that clever, conspiratorial smile returns to his face. She gives him a small smile back, hoping that she has not made a grave error in continuing to speak.

"I must say," he says, smile growing wider by the second, "I would have never guessed that she was your type. She's not very attractive, all stocky and short. Bad fashion sense. And her nose. Basically just the opposite of you."

Irene pulls her hand away from his. "Oh, no!" she says. "That's exactly why she's so beautiful!"

Eugenides is grinning wildly now as he reaches out to take her other hand. "Oh?" he says, his voice rising.

She brings her hand up to touch her cheek, sure she's blushing furiously. Irene can't bring herself to look back at him. "Helen is... she's so wise, so caring. She can accomplish anything she wants to. Her confidence is unmatched and it's no wonder that... that her people love her."

"Her people?" Eugenedies says. His voice is still high and she can hear his smile, and she wonders if the grin will ever leave his face.

She closes her eyes and sighs. He is still so young, she thinks to herself. He's been through so much, and some of that at her own hands, but in this moment she still sees a hope in him that has all but vanished from herself.

"I just... it's just a thought." She pulls her other hand from his again and folds her hands in her lap. "Two queens. Just a thought I had. Nothing more. It's not important." Irene looks at him, now, and his brow is furrowed and his smile has lost a lot of its brightness. He opens his mouth to speak but she continues. "You and I are married now. Attolia has its king and queen. Any ideas or... or hopes I may have had no longer matter."

Eugenides' brow furrows even further and he squints at her. "What?" he says. "How could they not-"

"I am grateful," she says, cutting him off, "grateful to have found people who understand, at the least. Understand without judging." She reaches down and touches the worn cover of the book on her lap, running her fingers along the edges. "But it is how it is."

He stares at her for a moment, his gaze flicking down to the book under her fingers. His expression is difficult to read, and Irene sighs.

Eugenides opens his mouth to speak, closes it, and opens it again. "Do you see this?" he says, and slowly takes the book from her hands.

She resists the urge to snatch it back, to forever hold onto this precious gift she's been given and wants no one else to touch, to even see. "Wait-" she says, but he this time he cuts her off.

"Why do you think my cousin gave this to you?" he says.

His face is a lot more serious now, and he's looking at her intently. One corner of his mouth twitches though, and she thinks perhaps that he wants to smile but is trying to conceal it. She's not sure where he's going with this.

"Helen... your cousin... she is very smart and very perceptive. All those days when she and I were together, negotiating peace terms between our two countries, she could definitely see how much I did not want to marry you. And she must have realized... realized one of the reasons why." She reaches over and takes the book out of his hand, pulling it to her chest. "She gave me this book to tell me... tell me that she knew. That she understood." Her heart is racing and she does not think she can say anything else.

She's stopped looking at him and is surprised to hear him snort through his nose. Is Eugenides about to laugh? She turns on him, fury building inside her chest, but he suddenly puts his hand on her shoulder. As if this weren't enough, he lets out another breath through his nose and looks at her. "Irene," he starts, and she stiffens, but he continues.

"So you see this book?" he says, and nods at it. "This book is Helen's favorite book. It is, quite possibly, her most valued possession. She's threatened to behead anyone who even thought about touching it. Even if that anyone is a cherished and beloved cousin who would obviously never do any harm." He shakes his head and places his brass hand over his chest.

She tries to give him her most blank look; it's a look she's perfected, after all. His half grin falls away and he looks at her seriously. "When Helen first read this book, she told me, she locked herself in her room and cried for an entire afternoon. And then she read the entire thing again and cried for the entire night as well. This was years ago, mind, before she was queen. Back when she had time to spend an entire night weeping over a book."

Irene has never spent an entire night weeping over a book, she thinks, but this is mostly because she had never found a book worth weeping over for an entire night. Now that she has, she knows that she too should perhaps spend her time a little wiser. But Eugenides is still talking.

"She told me all this one night, when she was still a new queen and I was newly her thief. She had had a particularly grueling day of ruling and negotiations, and so we stole away from the megaron to hide from her advisors, her ministers, and our family. I had suggested the palace roof, but she'd accurately assumed that would be the first place they'd look for us. We hid instead on the roof of Hephesia's temple, where we couldn't be seen. and we sat and talked for a long time about nothing and everything."

Irene hums under her breath. There are many things about Helen she admires, and many things also that she covets, and having someone to confide in, to trust and commiserate with, is one of them.

Eugenides continues. "One of the things we talked about that night was this book, the same book Helen's now given you. She told me all about it, and how she'd wept over it, and how she'd now read it so many times that she could quote passages from memory." He stops and pauses, and narrows his eyes and looks at Irene. "She also told me why she loved it so much, why it made her cry for hours, why it meant more to her than anything else she'd owned."

He's got a small strange smile on his face, and it takes her a moment to realize what he's saying. Her heart stops in her chest and she lets out a breath, fingers tightening on the book in her arms.

"She..." Irene whispers. "She told me I didn't have to marry you. She kept saying we could negotiate peace another way."

She hardly notices that Eugenides is replying to her; she's so focused on trying to breathe, trying to put her thoughts back together. "She said the same thing to me," he's saying. "Funny how it took us both so long to realize what she meant."

"Funny..." she breathes. Part of her does want to laugh, frantic and nervous, but instead she takes a deep breath and tries to slow her speeding thoughts. "We could have... we could have had two kings and two queens. This whole time. We could have." She steals a glance at Eugenides.

He's looking past her again and takes a breath as though he wants to speak, but holds it instead.

"What?" she asks.

He squints a little and the half-smile stays, though it looks a little pained now. "I think I should have talked to my cousin about this marriage more than I did," he says.

Yes, she agrees silently. Perhaps they both should have.

Irene thinks back to when Helen gave her this book, the joy in her fellow queen's eyes when she talked about it, her excitement when she said she wanted Irene to have it. But what Irene had originally taken as excitement, perhaps that had been nervousness, hidden by Helen's energetic laugh and bright smile.

She can hardly believe she hadn't realized before.

At least, she thinks to herself, that even though Eugenides was Helen's closest friend and family member, he also hadn't picked up on it until now. All the cleverness in the world hadn't helped him there. Though it would have been helpful, that perhaps they would have found another way.

As if reading her thoughts, Eugenides speaks up from beside her. "It may be... it may be that we still could."

She turns to him, startled. "What?"

"Two kings and two queens. That idea. You said we could have done it, and it's possible. Possible we still can."

She resists the urge to laugh in his face, but cannot help herself from feeling very bitter. "You can't possibly be serious." she says, but he's got a contemplative look on his face and doesn't seem to be joking. But he says nothing, so she continues. "If we try to divorce, you realize, our kingdoms will revolt. If I change my mind now, I will only appear weak. My barons will jump at the opportunity, and I would be thrown out. You realize this?"

His expression doesn't change and Irene becomes more and more frustrated. "And in addition, the peace between our countries is only tenuous at best. Do you think Eddis would stay in alliance with anyone who treated - continued to treat - their thief so cruelly? Even if their own queen herself would keep that alliance."

These things are so obvious and she's almost furious that she even has to spell it out for him. But Eugenides just nods at her. "You're right." he says. "Our options are quite limited, and it's true that we have to rule here together in Attolia."

"So then, how is it possible for there still to be two kings and two queens?" Irene replies, trying very hard not to snap at him. She's already much more flustered and unsure of herself than she's been in years, and hates the feeling. Trying to remain in control of her anger, at least, is something she can do, and it makes her feel a little more sure of herself.

Beside her, Eugenides starts to smile again, his grin widening slowly with each word he speaks. "It's possible because even if we are ruling, together, it's not required that i have to occupy your chambers."

She wrinkles her nose at his terrible choice of words. Regardless that it is their wedding night, even this is still too crass.

He leans back and for a moment she thinks he is going to put his arm around her shoulders, but he just settles onto one of her bed's many pillows. "I think I like the guest apartments on the far side of your palace," he says. "I, as the new king of Attolia, do decree that these are now mine."

"Attolis. The king of Attolia is Attolis," she says, quietly, and his smile falters for a moment. "And as Attolis, the entire palace is yours. So you... don't need to decree that they belong to you."

Eugenides scoffs. "You know what I meant! I am going to put all my belongings there. And sleep there. And be there. Those will be my apartments, and these will stay yours, alone."

"Alone?" she repeats, and looks at him from the corner of her eye.

"Well... perhaps... if our neighbor, the Queen of Eddis, is visiting our palace in order to meet with our advisors and barons to strengthen our alliance, perhaps our great Queen Attolia could deign to be polite and gracious and ask her to reside, for her visit, in the empty king's apartments beside the queen's."

Irene lets out a hum through her nose. "Only if, I assume, when negotiating peace with our other neighbor Sounis, our wise King Attolis gives Sounis's heir the guest apartments on the far side of the palace beside Attolis' own royal ones?"

Eugenides's smile could light a thousand torches.

When she had first agreed to this marriage, Irene had thought of countless ways that everything would play out, and how likely each possibility would be. Most possibilities were filled with a lot of melancholy, a lot of sadness and regret. And a fair amount of awkwardness. Not that, of course, everything about this isn't awkward, but the fact that Eugenides not only understands but also empathizes with how she feels has filled her with so much hope. She had never, ever, expected this.

"Well then," she says.

"Well then." Eugenides repeats.

They stay there in silence on the bed, her sitting and holding her book to her chest, him laying on her pillows with his eyes closed.

After a long moment, Eugenides pulls himself up from the bed to stand beside it, and looks down at her. For a moment she thinks he is going to clap his hands together, but he balls his hand into a fist and puts it on his hip. "Well then!" he says again. "With that discussed, there's a few other things I meant to do tonight!"

"What." Irene says, in the most flat voice she can muster.

He smiles down at her. "Well," he says, "I've been given a priceless opportunity to speak to the queen in the privacy of her own apartments."

"It's not that priceless. You are the king now. You can talk to me in private whenever you like." She lays the book on her bedside table and smooths out her sheets.

"Using this priceless opportunity," Eugenides continues, undaunted, "I would like to discuss some important things with you. For the good of the country."

Irene narrows her eyes at him. "Oh?" she says.

He looks around the room. "I think there need to be some changes around here. Important changes."

"Like?" she says, fluffing up the pillow Eugenides had flattened earlier.

"First, I think we need to take care of wardrobe. I've seen the rest of the royal robes set aside for me, and they're all atrocious and fit terribly. You should fire all your tailors and hire better ones." He narrows his eyes and nods his head, as though agreeing with himself.

_They fit terribly because they were sewn with a grown king in mind, not a boy_, Irene thinks, but she keeps this thought to herself. Instead, she says "We're not firing any of my tailors. They can either refit the king's robes or fashion new ones."

Eugenides gives her a pointed look. "Fine. Fine. We'll discuss that again later." He huffs. "Second, we should discuss your wardrobe as well."

She settles back under her sheets. "There's nothing wrong with my wardrobe, and this is not up for discussion." She's spent years carefully crafting her public image, and her wardrobe is a large part of that. If anything, his wardrobe should be tailored to more closely match hers, not the other way around.

"Hmm," Eugenides says, scowling. "We'll discuss that later too."

"We will not discuss that later," Irene replies, scowling back. "You may be Attolis now, and you may be required to rule this country with me, but that involves more important things than petty and frivolous changes to my clothes. Focus on those more important things."

He looks around the room. "Would suggesting getting better windows be considered petty and frivolous?"

"Not frivolous," she says.

"Perhaps then, some strategically placed hand-holds on your outer walls, specifically made to be used by someone with a hook?"

"Absolutely not."

"I should think then, at least, you could cut your number of royal guards by half. At the very least."

Eugenides does not even look surprised when the inkwell shatters on the wall behind him.


End file.
